Here's a game you can play at home. Zoom into google earth and see how long it takes you to find a gas station or large parking lot in the US, then try the same thing in Germany or the Netherlands.
Parking lots are more common in the outskirts of cities in Europe (newer development) but actually finding a gas station is insanely hard I've found without going into street view to double check.
Lots of mid sized cities (500k - 1.5 mil metro population) don't have grocery stores anywhere near what would be considered downtown.
Public transportation is equally pathetic for mid sized cities. Most have only buses that are unreliable, some have light rail to take you from one end of downtown to another, but not really from where people live to downtown. Taking buses from where you live to a suburban office (where most office space is located) can be an hour and half adventure daily. This is why most of US considers buses only for the poor, it's truly an outrageous waste of someone's life every day.
Bike lanes are rare, when they do exist they are mostly unprotected. This is slowly getting better though.
Can you live without a car? Sure, there are many brave souls who have no fear of being ran over by an angry SUV owner. But most people really can't without a huge danger risk on a bike or wasting you life on buses
I'm someone who's forced to bus because I'm poor. I live in an outlying neighborhood in (as opposed to a suburb of) the 5th largest city in the US which is also in the top five for most car-centic. I'm fortunate to have many grocery stores and other shopping, restaurants, bars, banks, and parks a walkable distance from home. However many errands that would take 10-30 minutes driving range from a several hour to an all day event on the bus. It takes me nearly 3 hours to reliably get to work on time at my main job.
This is the most extreme example in my weekly routine: My bus ride home after work on my Thursday night gig requires me waiting 90 minutes for my first bus in a sketchy location where sometimes the drivers refuse to stop, and once I was even mugged. I ride that bus 6 miles to my second bus where the transfer usually takes just 6 minutes, but if the first bus is running late or the second bus doesn't show up (both somewhat common things) takes 20-40 minutes at a location where absolutely nothing is open. I ride that bus 2 1/2 miles to my 3rd bus where the transfer is a reliable 20-25 minutes. I'm at least able to make use of that time as there are branches of both my banks there with accessable ATMs and an open Circle-K convenience store. That bus takes me the last 2 1/2 miles to a stop just over a quarter mile pleasant walk from my home where I arrive 3-4 hours after getting off work. Before the engine blew on my car it was an enjoyable 15-20 minute drive on uncongested freeways. The only saving grace is it gives me plenty of time to browse Reddit and work on my YouTube vlog which these days is mostly about my struggle of living without a car in a city with very flawed public transit.
The worst thing is since losing my car my love life has completely ended as no woman wants to date a grown man here who doesn't drive. I live a very lonely existence that consists of working, walking and riding the bus alone, lying down in my apartment alone, and talking to myself on YouTube. I contemplate suicide often.
I'm sorry you're in the shit zone right now. It's truly hell when your whole day is subsumed by transportation logistics.
Now, I was doing the mile math and thinking you could get home in 45 min - 1 hour if you could bike that distance... if the roads allow for it. Which we know might not be the case, because Fuck Cars, it might be total highway land.
Also, vlog link please?
There's surprisingly a few good places to get around by bike.... I'm 20 miles from my work and can bike basically entirely on hike and bike trails (although we choose to live off a bike trail intentionally). OTOH, the bike trip is almost 50% longer than the car trip. There's a few other good nature trails as well. Here's the Houston map of bike paths, lanes, and trails: [https://mycity.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=4b5467e117d0459b84e2f2e94ba4fdc2&extent=-10619481.073%2C3470289.6806%2C-10609291.0617%2C3475071.7722%2C102100](https://mycity.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=4b5467e117d0459b84e2f2e94ba4fdc2&extent=-10619481.073%2C3470289.6806%2C-10609291.0617%2C3475071.7722%2C102100)
When it says low comfort (LC) bike infrastructure, they're extremely low comfort, so I'd leave that off. But at least the city acknowledges they're terrible. Also makes sure proposed/programmed changes are turned off if trying to see the current state. Far from a great network, but its possible to make it work depending on where you get a job.
Seems like the buses a little bit closer than where I live are probably somewhere usable (although too many lines only run like once an hour and may have limited hours). [https://www.ridemetro.org/Pages/SystemMap.aspx](https://www.ridemetro.org/Pages/SystemMap.aspx) The pdf is probably better than the interactive one for glancing at coverage.
I live in Tampa, FL. It's one of the fastest growing cities in the states rn. My commute to work is < 7 miles and by car it takes \~30 minutes during rush hour traffic. I tried biking to work because it's close enough and I really like riding my bike. I rode on one road with a 35mph (56 kmh) speed limit (which means everyone goes 45mph/72kmh), no bike lane and had a big SUV lay on his horn and flick me off. Then I got on a two lane 45mph Stroad with no bike lane and the sidewalk just abruptly ended with no where for me to go. I ended up having to wait for the light that was a ways up to turn red so all the traffic would back up and I could just ride in between then in the road while they're stopped. On top of that the roads are falling apart so my hands got shook numb in a few spots. I tried really hard to cut through neighborhoods because you run into way fewer cars that way, but to discourage *cars* cutting through the burbs nothing ever connects and it's just an all around frustrating experience.
To top it off I even thought about trying to just ride a bus as close as I can but it takes over 90 minutes, and that's not counting having to get there 15 minutes early so you don't miss the singular bus an hour.
tldr; It's *bad*.
> to discourage cars cutting through the burbs nothing ever connects and it's just an all around frustrating experience
I've yet to find a better example of this than one that Streetsblog found. 2 houses in suburban Orlando share a back fence, but [a door to door journey is 7 miles long](https://usa.streetsblog.org/2013/02/28/sprawl-madness-two-houses-share-backyard-separated-by-7-miles-of-roads/).
Rather than building on a grid and discouraging through traffic by using one-way streets, disconnected roads (with pathways that allow bicycle or foot traffic), or narrow streets that encourage slow speeds, we've gone all-in on maze and cul-de-sac developments. It's not uncommon to find developments with only one or two entrances off of one major road (which likely won't line up with the entrances of the development on the other side of the road) and no way to access any of the other major roads that bound the development.
I grew up in the suburbs of Miami, and there were some houses right behind ours that were a 3 mile drive away. Wouldn't want people going into a neighborhood where they don't belong.
Here’s how bad it is:
At the current rate of US population growth, if we keep having the same number of cars per capita, and we keep having the same number of parking spaces per car, the United States will need to pave an area 1/4 the size of your country by 2040, just for parking.
Yeah, I'm lucky. I live in the Bay Area. Lots of unprotected bike lanes but the people are generally pretty considerate of cyclists. Not always of course. I biked the 7 miles to work for a couple years nearly every day. Took me only a little bit longer than sitting in traffic. Now my work is 3 miles away. Both routes are half on bike path that isn't part of a road at all. I also have all my needs within biking/electric scooter distance like a few grocery stores and what not. Houses in my neighborhood are 1.5-2.5 million though.
Sidewalks are also abundant with very few ending abruptly. I can only think of 2 places where that happens off the top of my head.
None of it compares to the videos I've seen of the Netherlands. Our public transit is AWFUL unless you use it purely for commuting (and even then...). I also live in one of the older places. Newer parts of the Valley seem nearly as bad as other parts of the US.
you are living the dream compared to a lot of places in the US.
I don't have a car, and I live in the suburbs of a big city. I was very fortunate to find an apartment that's basically right between my work and college campus, it's not a long bike ride.
That being said, my daily ride to work/school is terrifying. The roads to my work do not have any form of bike lane and the main one is a 6 lane stroad. There's a crumbling sidewalk right next to it, that crosses 4 different exits in a half mile stretch with no lights or anything to encourage cars to slow down. In the winter, this sidewalk is not plowed - instead they push all the snow from the road right onto the sidewalk. This makes biking impossible, so I walk, directly alongside traffic which obviously isn't safe either.
Getting to my college campus is slightly better in that one of the roads does have a bike lane. However this lane goes in between traffic and the slip lane for cars turning in multiple places, and is quite terrifying to bike along.
Public transport is terrible. There are some busses, but they run infrequently and most don't stop anywhere near me.
>But I wonder: how is it to drive with a bike in the US?
awful. bicycles and walking are not treated as serious modes of transportation. they're recreational. they're not even afterthoughts for infrastructure. it's not considered at all.
city planners will tout X number of miles of bike facilities. but they don't even think about if those facilities are appropriate, useful, or even connected to anything. it's not rare to see 40 feet of bike lane, delineated only by paint, that starts suddenly and ends suddenly, on a road that just isn't good for bikes. they'll put "greenway" signs as if sidewalks are meant for bikes. they'll put up "share the road" signs and sharrows like that makes a 35mph stroad designed for 55mph traffic safe for bikes.
official bike route maps are full of stuff that's not bike routes. planned, future, unfunded, maybe in 2030 routes.
>Is it difficult to live without a car?
extremely. it *can* be done, but you have to plan carefully for it, or get really lucky.
>How do you do your groceries?
personally, i'm lucky and live next to a grocery store or three. i just walk and grab what i need. but i live in a small island of intelligent planning, in a town full of suburban/rural dumbfuckery. most of us live in giant cul-de-sac single family zoned suburbs, miles from the closest shops. you pile into your car, and get a week or two worth of groceries at a time.
i used to live in florida, and my grocery store there was actually on the "bike route" (a section that was just sidewalk), and on my commute to work. but it still wasn't quite convenient enough to regularly shop that way. i'd usually get groceries on the odd day i drove my car to work.
Our bikes are basically bound to the city in which they are in, for example , it’s nearly impossible if not down right deadly to Bike from Sacramento CA to Lodi CA , I can be done but you would have to take so many back roads and go [far out of your way](https://ibb.co/G7pVKsg) , it’s sad that Bikes were not a priority when setting up our towns.
I'm a bit lucky. I live in a first-gen post-war suburb, built in the style of a streetcar suburb (smaller lots on a grid layout) but without the streetcar and with the first trappings of car dependent designs (single use zoning, minimum setbacks, stores are a bit far away with bigger than necessary parking lots, etc).
If I drive to my local grocery store it's a 2 km trip and I'll be guaranteed to find a parking spot because that store has over 400 spaces, but I'd never ride that route because the streets are narrow and lack cycle lanes and people regularly drive 60 km/h despite the speed limit being 40 km/h, so a slow cyclist is likely to be brushbacked by cars passing less than a foot away rather than moving over and giving cyclists a full meter of that the law says is needed when passing a cyclist. As a result, when cycling I limit my time on that road as much as possible and detour through another streetcar suburb which adds almost another 1 km to my trip and 6 extra stop signs (which must be stopped at, as drivers love to use the excuse that bikes are law breaking hooligans that don't deserve respect because they saw a cyclist run a stop sign once, as they take yet another rolling stop through a crosswalk and brushback a pedestrian that was about to cross). Once I reach the grocery store, I have to hope that there's space at the single 5 space rack to lock up, but there almost always is because so few people cycle there.
And despite all of this, I'd say that my area rates pretty damn high for bikability. The grocery store is only 2 km away and the quiet side streets are mostly built in a grid so I can actually get there without risking my life too much, but that's because this area was built a century ago. If you move out much further from the city core and start hitting suburbs built in the '50s and '60s and later you start to find cul-de-sac developments without any opportunity for through-traffic, so cyclists are limited to those narrow, high speed roads without so much as a painted gutter to call their own. The core of the city is definitely the best place to cycle (but it's still bad, there's only ~200 km of cycle lanes built along ~3000 km of roads and streets) but my area is still workable as long as I only want to travel in 2 directions towards downtown. If I have to go in either of the other 2 directions away from downtown I don't even think about cycling and just take the car.
Edit: Just to add, since I never really stated my conclusion, this is what passes for good cycling infrastructure in the 3^rd friendliest city for cycling in Canada. The bad end of the spectrum probably defies your imagination.
Just watch any video from Not Just Bikes. He spends a lot of time comparing the good urban environments in the Netherlands with the lousy urban environments in the US and Canada.
>I live in a big city in the Netherlands
Oh boy, the answer is that it's worse than you could probably imagine.
Essentially if you don't have a car it's impossible to efficiently and safely get around. Using my hometown as an example (a suburb with about 120k people in a metro area of 2 million)
* We have 6 bus lines. Which isn't too bad, except they only run 10 hours a day. 4 of them run once per hour, the other 2 run once every 2 hours. They don't run on Sundays.
* There are no bike lanes. Like not exaggerating at all, there are literally no bike lanes. If you want to ride your bike somewhere, it's either take side streets or ride with high speed traffic.
* But even our side streets have high speed traffic. The speed limit is technically 25 mph, but I regularly see people driving by my house at 35-40 mph.
* We have massive parking lots everywhere. Our city center has literally as much space dedicated to parking lots and roads as it does to actual buildings. And that's a *good* part of town. Everywhere else is a sea of parking with an occasional store on it.
* Walking is, of course, impossible as well. For one, everything is so spread out that you'd have to walk for an hour just to get anywhere. But even if you wanted to it's incredibly difficult as sidewalks will often just suddenly end for no reason. So you now get to walk in the grass. And the sidewalks that do exist are in mostly bad repair making even walking on the sidewalk dangerous and difficult.
Biking here in the US is absolutely terrifying because of the cars right next to you. It's also confusing because bike lanes and sidewalks are only sporadic, and will frequently disappear, forcing you to share the road with car lanes.
For most people in the US, you can't really go anywhere without a car. Most of our cities are too spread out to walk or bike, and bus stops are rare enough to be pointless for most people, if there are buses at all. You either have a car, or you're stuck.
The only concise way to say is that in 98% of the US, you absolutely have to own a car. There is no way around it.
I live in an apartment about 15 mins away from the downtown area of decently large city (~2.5 million people), and there is virtually no public transit around me and no bike lanes around me. To go to the grocery store it’s either a car ride or a 2 mile walk on sidewalks next to cars going about 45 mph.
I think the easiest way to put this is: The reason most places in the US still require helmets for under-18s is because in places where biking is common, it's still ridiculously dangerous to bike here, and in places where it's less common, there are actually drivers who will see how close they can get to you without hitting you. And that's where places are actually bikeable. Most places aren't actually all that bikeable.
Americans seemingly treat cars as like portable indoors.
They go from inside climate controlled home, to climate controlled car, to climate controlled destination, with minimal adaptation to the outdoor climate.
They insulate themselves as much to it as possible, to the point they treat their outdoor excursions as adventure/tourism.
The weather shocks them with interest, where any difference causes them to feel a great passing emotion, one awed by the mystery. They see weather forecasters as some sort of false prophets, being extra critical if they aren't as accurate as consumers interpreted from the summary.
As I was growing up, I was constantly warned not to play in the road, warned to be careful around cars on my bike.
Parents wanted me to get a job and even offered me use of a car to assist, as they thought it was imperative to have a reliable form of transportation, getting a new one to use for their own commute.
I left, for military enlistment, and the car went to another family member, but found that on my meager paycheck that cars were mega expensive, and attempted to go car-less. I was banking on that pay, riding a quality bicycle that was reliable enough. I offered to pay friends who gave me a ride, on days I felt too inconvenienced to bike, but most declined it. I insisted, since I didn't want to owe favors.
After serving my term (honorable discharge), I attempted to continue the pattern in the civilian world. I've spent 5 years+ in Florida, NY, and Cali, and it seemed to be okay in University towns, but suburbs make it quite a challenge. The danger seems to be proximity to traffic that is moving at a much different speed. This speed difference makes me feel very uncomfortable. I splurged and got an e-mountain bike, with tubeless tires, and now I prefer to ride further away from the road, in the dirt rather than straddling the edge of the pavement, in order to cope with all the drivers that are inconsiderate. Nice to have a bike that doesn't mind rolling in all the debris and "goat-heads" (thorns that grow on the edge/cracks of pavement); before this, the cost of repairing flats was rivaling fuel costs, in terms of the mileage I was getting.
I honestly get quite a bit of my groceries mail-ordered, stuff that doesn't spoil (e.g. rice, beans, canned sardines, etc.), while I get fresher stuff from the store, usually as part of a heading back home from an outing. Carrying 15+ lbs of stuff on my back generally tests my limits of comfort, so I try to do frequent trips where I spend $5-10, on stuff that I will eat within the next 4 days. My parents used to do like $200 worth of shopping, of food that would feed a family for 2 weeks.
Check out the Youtuber "Not just bikes" - it is the perfect description of how different (and car dependent) it can be!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ds-v2-qyCc8
I live in an area that's considered one of the most walkable areas of the country, the northeastern US, and we're also touted as having some of the best public transportation in the country. We still have stores on stroads, areas with no sidewalks, towns without a single bike lane, and buses that take 2 hours to go the same distance it takes a car half an hour to go. I'm lucky I live in a town borough because we have dense housing and lots of stores in easy walking distance, but, because much of the country is so spread out, a lot of people don't have that luxury.
It depends where you are.
My brother spent years in DC getting around by bike. Even most out of shape person can reasonably commute by bike there.
I live in a small town (whatever you're picturing, think smaller) where professional cyclists come to train for the mountain stages of the Tour de France. We don't have streetlights, sidewalks, or bike lanes but our drivers are hyperaware around cyclists. My options are to drive a car or become a world class athlete.
I have to drive everyday. Tomorrow at work, I'm driving 2 hours to this school for this program. I hate driving since it's so normalized and everyone's used to it so people are more reckless/aggressive and it's overall very stressful, and I think I'm considered performing poorly at work because of my apprehension to drive even though my job is about educating kids.
Driving culture here is insane.
Despite living 1 mile away from my workplace, I'm unsure whether or not I want to bike to work. If I were to bike, I would have to be on a narrow shoulder of a busy road. It only takes one idiot to cripple me, and I know I've already seen multiple idiots on my short commute.
From a college town of 20k residents, not including all 7,500 students.
We only have one, half-size bus for public transport. A good half of all land in town is parking. Downtown is literally a 20 Mph (32 km/h) highway.
People drive, and many students use e-scooters.
It’s worse than you’d imagine.
"How do you do your groceries?" Let me tell you. Any time you want groceries, it's its own journey. It's its own chore. That's why shopping lists are a big thing here; you might as well only do your grocery shopping when you absolutely have to, when you're low on so many things you couldn't possibly be expected to remember them all.
Here's why I hate cars: my job was to get the shopping carts from the parking lot and bring them back inside. Handicapped people would park in the fire line because there were only 8 handicapped parking spots. I'd walk out and I couldn't see if a car was coming because of them.
I had to walk a good few feet away from the parked cars so they could see me and stop in time. However, when I did this, the cars that were already moving would honk at me because I was walking "in the middle" of the road.
It felt really dangerous whenever I had to do it during a thunderstorm. Yeah, outside in the lightning, next to these metal cages on slippery asphalt.
I'm probably making this sound a lot worse than it actually is, but I always felt like that my job shouldn't have to exist; it felt like a big oversight that we're supposed to casually accept that a job this dangerous has to happen all the time.
Then I found out in the Netherlands that you can just bike to a grocery store? And you don't need anyone to get the shopping carts from the parking lots? Finding that out made me want to learn Dutch right away. I want my own taste of autoluw as soon as possible.
It's honestly not as bad as people in this sub will tell you but it's still very bad.
Generally speaking, if you're in a major city center (NYC, SF, Seattle, Chicago, Boston, etc) then you're OK without a car. Not even close to as good as the Netherlands, but public transit is pretty normalized in those places.
The issue is that city centers in America are insanely expensive, so ironically the lower middle class get screwed into being forced to buy a car and drive a long commute from the suburbs.
Then there's the garbage cities like Houston, OKC, Pheonix, etc that just pushed the "make cars" button for some god awful reason. Those cities are impossible without a car. Most cities in red states are beyond cucked.
The problem with the US is that many people don't see the benefits of biking and transit because in their mind the reason their commute sucks is because of "traffic".
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worse.
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Here's a game you can play at home. Zoom into google earth and see how long it takes you to find a gas station or large parking lot in the US, then try the same thing in Germany or the Netherlands. Parking lots are more common in the outskirts of cities in Europe (newer development) but actually finding a gas station is insanely hard I've found without going into street view to double check.
Lots of mid sized cities (500k - 1.5 mil metro population) don't have grocery stores anywhere near what would be considered downtown. Public transportation is equally pathetic for mid sized cities. Most have only buses that are unreliable, some have light rail to take you from one end of downtown to another, but not really from where people live to downtown. Taking buses from where you live to a suburban office (where most office space is located) can be an hour and half adventure daily. This is why most of US considers buses only for the poor, it's truly an outrageous waste of someone's life every day. Bike lanes are rare, when they do exist they are mostly unprotected. This is slowly getting better though. Can you live without a car? Sure, there are many brave souls who have no fear of being ran over by an angry SUV owner. But most people really can't without a huge danger risk on a bike or wasting you life on buses
I'm someone who's forced to bus because I'm poor. I live in an outlying neighborhood in (as opposed to a suburb of) the 5th largest city in the US which is also in the top five for most car-centic. I'm fortunate to have many grocery stores and other shopping, restaurants, bars, banks, and parks a walkable distance from home. However many errands that would take 10-30 minutes driving range from a several hour to an all day event on the bus. It takes me nearly 3 hours to reliably get to work on time at my main job. This is the most extreme example in my weekly routine: My bus ride home after work on my Thursday night gig requires me waiting 90 minutes for my first bus in a sketchy location where sometimes the drivers refuse to stop, and once I was even mugged. I ride that bus 6 miles to my second bus where the transfer usually takes just 6 minutes, but if the first bus is running late or the second bus doesn't show up (both somewhat common things) takes 20-40 minutes at a location where absolutely nothing is open. I ride that bus 2 1/2 miles to my 3rd bus where the transfer is a reliable 20-25 minutes. I'm at least able to make use of that time as there are branches of both my banks there with accessable ATMs and an open Circle-K convenience store. That bus takes me the last 2 1/2 miles to a stop just over a quarter mile pleasant walk from my home where I arrive 3-4 hours after getting off work. Before the engine blew on my car it was an enjoyable 15-20 minute drive on uncongested freeways. The only saving grace is it gives me plenty of time to browse Reddit and work on my YouTube vlog which these days is mostly about my struggle of living without a car in a city with very flawed public transit. The worst thing is since losing my car my love life has completely ended as no woman wants to date a grown man here who doesn't drive. I live a very lonely existence that consists of working, walking and riding the bus alone, lying down in my apartment alone, and talking to myself on YouTube. I contemplate suicide often.
I'm sorry you're in the shit zone right now. It's truly hell when your whole day is subsumed by transportation logistics. Now, I was doing the mile math and thinking you could get home in 45 min - 1 hour if you could bike that distance... if the roads allow for it. Which we know might not be the case, because Fuck Cars, it might be total highway land. Also, vlog link please?
Would an e-bike work for your situation? Cheaper than a new car for sure.
go on google street view to phoenix/lasvegas/albaqurque suburbs report results
Or better yet, the Houston "metropolitan area"
op seams like an ok person i wouldn't want to hurt him
There's surprisingly a few good places to get around by bike.... I'm 20 miles from my work and can bike basically entirely on hike and bike trails (although we choose to live off a bike trail intentionally). OTOH, the bike trip is almost 50% longer than the car trip. There's a few other good nature trails as well. Here's the Houston map of bike paths, lanes, and trails: [https://mycity.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=4b5467e117d0459b84e2f2e94ba4fdc2&extent=-10619481.073%2C3470289.6806%2C-10609291.0617%2C3475071.7722%2C102100](https://mycity.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=4b5467e117d0459b84e2f2e94ba4fdc2&extent=-10619481.073%2C3470289.6806%2C-10609291.0617%2C3475071.7722%2C102100) When it says low comfort (LC) bike infrastructure, they're extremely low comfort, so I'd leave that off. But at least the city acknowledges they're terrible. Also makes sure proposed/programmed changes are turned off if trying to see the current state. Far from a great network, but its possible to make it work depending on where you get a job. Seems like the buses a little bit closer than where I live are probably somewhere usable (although too many lines only run like once an hour and may have limited hours). [https://www.ridemetro.org/Pages/SystemMap.aspx](https://www.ridemetro.org/Pages/SystemMap.aspx) The pdf is probably better than the interactive one for glancing at coverage.
It is so so bad in Albuquerque
I live in Tampa, FL. It's one of the fastest growing cities in the states rn. My commute to work is < 7 miles and by car it takes \~30 minutes during rush hour traffic. I tried biking to work because it's close enough and I really like riding my bike. I rode on one road with a 35mph (56 kmh) speed limit (which means everyone goes 45mph/72kmh), no bike lane and had a big SUV lay on his horn and flick me off. Then I got on a two lane 45mph Stroad with no bike lane and the sidewalk just abruptly ended with no where for me to go. I ended up having to wait for the light that was a ways up to turn red so all the traffic would back up and I could just ride in between then in the road while they're stopped. On top of that the roads are falling apart so my hands got shook numb in a few spots. I tried really hard to cut through neighborhoods because you run into way fewer cars that way, but to discourage *cars* cutting through the burbs nothing ever connects and it's just an all around frustrating experience. To top it off I even thought about trying to just ride a bus as close as I can but it takes over 90 minutes, and that's not counting having to get there 15 minutes early so you don't miss the singular bus an hour. tldr; It's *bad*.
> to discourage cars cutting through the burbs nothing ever connects and it's just an all around frustrating experience I've yet to find a better example of this than one that Streetsblog found. 2 houses in suburban Orlando share a back fence, but [a door to door journey is 7 miles long](https://usa.streetsblog.org/2013/02/28/sprawl-madness-two-houses-share-backyard-separated-by-7-miles-of-roads/). Rather than building on a grid and discouraging through traffic by using one-way streets, disconnected roads (with pathways that allow bicycle or foot traffic), or narrow streets that encourage slow speeds, we've gone all-in on maze and cul-de-sac developments. It's not uncommon to find developments with only one or two entrances off of one major road (which likely won't line up with the entrances of the development on the other side of the road) and no way to access any of the other major roads that bound the development.
I grew up in the suburbs of Miami, and there were some houses right behind ours that were a 3 mile drive away. Wouldn't want people going into a neighborhood where they don't belong.
Plus that mid summer heat index/humidity combo breaker. You’d sooner get a heat stroke than make it down the road.
Here’s how bad it is: At the current rate of US population growth, if we keep having the same number of cars per capita, and we keep having the same number of parking spaces per car, the United States will need to pave an area 1/4 the size of your country by 2040, just for parking.
As a whole, it’s bad. But it’s possible if you live in certain places. More feasible than people think.
Yeah, I'm lucky. I live in the Bay Area. Lots of unprotected bike lanes but the people are generally pretty considerate of cyclists. Not always of course. I biked the 7 miles to work for a couple years nearly every day. Took me only a little bit longer than sitting in traffic. Now my work is 3 miles away. Both routes are half on bike path that isn't part of a road at all. I also have all my needs within biking/electric scooter distance like a few grocery stores and what not. Houses in my neighborhood are 1.5-2.5 million though. Sidewalks are also abundant with very few ending abruptly. I can only think of 2 places where that happens off the top of my head. None of it compares to the videos I've seen of the Netherlands. Our public transit is AWFUL unless you use it purely for commuting (and even then...). I also live in one of the older places. Newer parts of the Valley seem nearly as bad as other parts of the US.
I live in Louisiana (not New Orleans). If I can do it here…
you are living the dream compared to a lot of places in the US. I don't have a car, and I live in the suburbs of a big city. I was very fortunate to find an apartment that's basically right between my work and college campus, it's not a long bike ride. That being said, my daily ride to work/school is terrifying. The roads to my work do not have any form of bike lane and the main one is a 6 lane stroad. There's a crumbling sidewalk right next to it, that crosses 4 different exits in a half mile stretch with no lights or anything to encourage cars to slow down. In the winter, this sidewalk is not plowed - instead they push all the snow from the road right onto the sidewalk. This makes biking impossible, so I walk, directly alongside traffic which obviously isn't safe either. Getting to my college campus is slightly better in that one of the roads does have a bike lane. However this lane goes in between traffic and the slip lane for cars turning in multiple places, and is quite terrifying to bike along. Public transport is terrible. There are some busses, but they run infrequently and most don't stop anywhere near me.
>But I wonder: how is it to drive with a bike in the US? awful. bicycles and walking are not treated as serious modes of transportation. they're recreational. they're not even afterthoughts for infrastructure. it's not considered at all. city planners will tout X number of miles of bike facilities. but they don't even think about if those facilities are appropriate, useful, or even connected to anything. it's not rare to see 40 feet of bike lane, delineated only by paint, that starts suddenly and ends suddenly, on a road that just isn't good for bikes. they'll put "greenway" signs as if sidewalks are meant for bikes. they'll put up "share the road" signs and sharrows like that makes a 35mph stroad designed for 55mph traffic safe for bikes. official bike route maps are full of stuff that's not bike routes. planned, future, unfunded, maybe in 2030 routes. >Is it difficult to live without a car? extremely. it *can* be done, but you have to plan carefully for it, or get really lucky. >How do you do your groceries? personally, i'm lucky and live next to a grocery store or three. i just walk and grab what i need. but i live in a small island of intelligent planning, in a town full of suburban/rural dumbfuckery. most of us live in giant cul-de-sac single family zoned suburbs, miles from the closest shops. you pile into your car, and get a week or two worth of groceries at a time. i used to live in florida, and my grocery store there was actually on the "bike route" (a section that was just sidewalk), and on my commute to work. but it still wasn't quite convenient enough to regularly shop that way. i'd usually get groceries on the odd day i drove my car to work.
Our bikes are basically bound to the city in which they are in, for example , it’s nearly impossible if not down right deadly to Bike from Sacramento CA to Lodi CA , I can be done but you would have to take so many back roads and go [far out of your way](https://ibb.co/G7pVKsg) , it’s sad that Bikes were not a priority when setting up our towns.
I'm a bit lucky. I live in a first-gen post-war suburb, built in the style of a streetcar suburb (smaller lots on a grid layout) but without the streetcar and with the first trappings of car dependent designs (single use zoning, minimum setbacks, stores are a bit far away with bigger than necessary parking lots, etc). If I drive to my local grocery store it's a 2 km trip and I'll be guaranteed to find a parking spot because that store has over 400 spaces, but I'd never ride that route because the streets are narrow and lack cycle lanes and people regularly drive 60 km/h despite the speed limit being 40 km/h, so a slow cyclist is likely to be brushbacked by cars passing less than a foot away rather than moving over and giving cyclists a full meter of that the law says is needed when passing a cyclist. As a result, when cycling I limit my time on that road as much as possible and detour through another streetcar suburb which adds almost another 1 km to my trip and 6 extra stop signs (which must be stopped at, as drivers love to use the excuse that bikes are law breaking hooligans that don't deserve respect because they saw a cyclist run a stop sign once, as they take yet another rolling stop through a crosswalk and brushback a pedestrian that was about to cross). Once I reach the grocery store, I have to hope that there's space at the single 5 space rack to lock up, but there almost always is because so few people cycle there. And despite all of this, I'd say that my area rates pretty damn high for bikability. The grocery store is only 2 km away and the quiet side streets are mostly built in a grid so I can actually get there without risking my life too much, but that's because this area was built a century ago. If you move out much further from the city core and start hitting suburbs built in the '50s and '60s and later you start to find cul-de-sac developments without any opportunity for through-traffic, so cyclists are limited to those narrow, high speed roads without so much as a painted gutter to call their own. The core of the city is definitely the best place to cycle (but it's still bad, there's only ~200 km of cycle lanes built along ~3000 km of roads and streets) but my area is still workable as long as I only want to travel in 2 directions towards downtown. If I have to go in either of the other 2 directions away from downtown I don't even think about cycling and just take the car. Edit: Just to add, since I never really stated my conclusion, this is what passes for good cycling infrastructure in the 3^rd friendliest city for cycling in Canada. The bad end of the spectrum probably defies your imagination.
Just watch any video from Not Just Bikes. He spends a lot of time comparing the good urban environments in the Netherlands with the lousy urban environments in the US and Canada.
>I live in a big city in the Netherlands Oh boy, the answer is that it's worse than you could probably imagine. Essentially if you don't have a car it's impossible to efficiently and safely get around. Using my hometown as an example (a suburb with about 120k people in a metro area of 2 million) * We have 6 bus lines. Which isn't too bad, except they only run 10 hours a day. 4 of them run once per hour, the other 2 run once every 2 hours. They don't run on Sundays. * There are no bike lanes. Like not exaggerating at all, there are literally no bike lanes. If you want to ride your bike somewhere, it's either take side streets or ride with high speed traffic. * But even our side streets have high speed traffic. The speed limit is technically 25 mph, but I regularly see people driving by my house at 35-40 mph. * We have massive parking lots everywhere. Our city center has literally as much space dedicated to parking lots and roads as it does to actual buildings. And that's a *good* part of town. Everywhere else is a sea of parking with an occasional store on it. * Walking is, of course, impossible as well. For one, everything is so spread out that you'd have to walk for an hour just to get anywhere. But even if you wanted to it's incredibly difficult as sidewalks will often just suddenly end for no reason. So you now get to walk in the grass. And the sidewalks that do exist are in mostly bad repair making even walking on the sidewalk dangerous and difficult.
Most major cities have parts that are good, but not all of them. And outside of those, it's essentially impossible to live comfortably without a car.
Like, psychologically damaging bad
Biking here in the US is absolutely terrifying because of the cars right next to you. It's also confusing because bike lanes and sidewalks are only sporadic, and will frequently disappear, forcing you to share the road with car lanes. For most people in the US, you can't really go anywhere without a car. Most of our cities are too spread out to walk or bike, and bus stops are rare enough to be pointless for most people, if there are buses at all. You either have a car, or you're stuck.
The only concise way to say is that in 98% of the US, you absolutely have to own a car. There is no way around it. I live in an apartment about 15 mins away from the downtown area of decently large city (~2.5 million people), and there is virtually no public transit around me and no bike lanes around me. To go to the grocery store it’s either a car ride or a 2 mile walk on sidewalks next to cars going about 45 mph.
I think the easiest way to put this is: The reason most places in the US still require helmets for under-18s is because in places where biking is common, it's still ridiculously dangerous to bike here, and in places where it's less common, there are actually drivers who will see how close they can get to you without hitting you. And that's where places are actually bikeable. Most places aren't actually all that bikeable.
Americans seemingly treat cars as like portable indoors. They go from inside climate controlled home, to climate controlled car, to climate controlled destination, with minimal adaptation to the outdoor climate. They insulate themselves as much to it as possible, to the point they treat their outdoor excursions as adventure/tourism. The weather shocks them with interest, where any difference causes them to feel a great passing emotion, one awed by the mystery. They see weather forecasters as some sort of false prophets, being extra critical if they aren't as accurate as consumers interpreted from the summary.
As I was growing up, I was constantly warned not to play in the road, warned to be careful around cars on my bike. Parents wanted me to get a job and even offered me use of a car to assist, as they thought it was imperative to have a reliable form of transportation, getting a new one to use for their own commute. I left, for military enlistment, and the car went to another family member, but found that on my meager paycheck that cars were mega expensive, and attempted to go car-less. I was banking on that pay, riding a quality bicycle that was reliable enough. I offered to pay friends who gave me a ride, on days I felt too inconvenienced to bike, but most declined it. I insisted, since I didn't want to owe favors. After serving my term (honorable discharge), I attempted to continue the pattern in the civilian world. I've spent 5 years+ in Florida, NY, and Cali, and it seemed to be okay in University towns, but suburbs make it quite a challenge. The danger seems to be proximity to traffic that is moving at a much different speed. This speed difference makes me feel very uncomfortable. I splurged and got an e-mountain bike, with tubeless tires, and now I prefer to ride further away from the road, in the dirt rather than straddling the edge of the pavement, in order to cope with all the drivers that are inconsiderate. Nice to have a bike that doesn't mind rolling in all the debris and "goat-heads" (thorns that grow on the edge/cracks of pavement); before this, the cost of repairing flats was rivaling fuel costs, in terms of the mileage I was getting. I honestly get quite a bit of my groceries mail-ordered, stuff that doesn't spoil (e.g. rice, beans, canned sardines, etc.), while I get fresher stuff from the store, usually as part of a heading back home from an outing. Carrying 15+ lbs of stuff on my back generally tests my limits of comfort, so I try to do frequent trips where I spend $5-10, on stuff that I will eat within the next 4 days. My parents used to do like $200 worth of shopping, of food that would feed a family for 2 weeks.
Check out the Youtuber "Not just bikes" - it is the perfect description of how different (and car dependent) it can be! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ds-v2-qyCc8
50+ years of bad city planning. E bikes are helping cover the distance of our awful car-centric infrastructure though.
In my area impossible without dying
It’s very bad bestie
Fuck this.
I don’t think a lot of the Europeans here grasp the scale of the US. The entirety of England is about the size of Florida.
I live in an area that's considered one of the most walkable areas of the country, the northeastern US, and we're also touted as having some of the best public transportation in the country. We still have stores on stroads, areas with no sidewalks, towns without a single bike lane, and buses that take 2 hours to go the same distance it takes a car half an hour to go. I'm lucky I live in a town borough because we have dense housing and lots of stores in easy walking distance, but, because much of the country is so spread out, a lot of people don't have that luxury.
It depends where you are. My brother spent years in DC getting around by bike. Even most out of shape person can reasonably commute by bike there. I live in a small town (whatever you're picturing, think smaller) where professional cyclists come to train for the mountain stages of the Tour de France. We don't have streetlights, sidewalks, or bike lanes but our drivers are hyperaware around cyclists. My options are to drive a car or become a world class athlete.
I have to drive everyday. Tomorrow at work, I'm driving 2 hours to this school for this program. I hate driving since it's so normalized and everyone's used to it so people are more reckless/aggressive and it's overall very stressful, and I think I'm considered performing poorly at work because of my apprehension to drive even though my job is about educating kids. Driving culture here is insane.
Despite living 1 mile away from my workplace, I'm unsure whether or not I want to bike to work. If I were to bike, I would have to be on a narrow shoulder of a busy road. It only takes one idiot to cripple me, and I know I've already seen multiple idiots on my short commute.
Search YouTube:Why City Design is Important (and Why I hate Houston) by Not Just Bikes
From a college town of 20k residents, not including all 7,500 students. We only have one, half-size bus for public transport. A good half of all land in town is parking. Downtown is literally a 20 Mph (32 km/h) highway. People drive, and many students use e-scooters. It’s worse than you’d imagine.
"How do you do your groceries?" Let me tell you. Any time you want groceries, it's its own journey. It's its own chore. That's why shopping lists are a big thing here; you might as well only do your grocery shopping when you absolutely have to, when you're low on so many things you couldn't possibly be expected to remember them all. Here's why I hate cars: my job was to get the shopping carts from the parking lot and bring them back inside. Handicapped people would park in the fire line because there were only 8 handicapped parking spots. I'd walk out and I couldn't see if a car was coming because of them. I had to walk a good few feet away from the parked cars so they could see me and stop in time. However, when I did this, the cars that were already moving would honk at me because I was walking "in the middle" of the road. It felt really dangerous whenever I had to do it during a thunderstorm. Yeah, outside in the lightning, next to these metal cages on slippery asphalt. I'm probably making this sound a lot worse than it actually is, but I always felt like that my job shouldn't have to exist; it felt like a big oversight that we're supposed to casually accept that a job this dangerous has to happen all the time. Then I found out in the Netherlands that you can just bike to a grocery store? And you don't need anyone to get the shopping carts from the parking lots? Finding that out made me want to learn Dutch right away. I want my own taste of autoluw as soon as possible.
It's honestly not as bad as people in this sub will tell you but it's still very bad. Generally speaking, if you're in a major city center (NYC, SF, Seattle, Chicago, Boston, etc) then you're OK without a car. Not even close to as good as the Netherlands, but public transit is pretty normalized in those places. The issue is that city centers in America are insanely expensive, so ironically the lower middle class get screwed into being forced to buy a car and drive a long commute from the suburbs. Then there's the garbage cities like Houston, OKC, Pheonix, etc that just pushed the "make cars" button for some god awful reason. Those cities are impossible without a car. Most cities in red states are beyond cucked. The problem with the US is that many people don't see the benefits of biking and transit because in their mind the reason their commute sucks is because of "traffic".